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Noemi Noemi

13 décembre 2009

Fight the habit but honor the tradition

... I quote my mother in the title, she will confirm this state of mind of her...

Chrismas - Noël in French - is important.

I have so deep memories of hapiness linked to this period of the year that I still feel strange to spend it far from Home, even if it's the second time... Noemi phones Home, like ET.
So I couldn't resist and I brought Chrismas inside my little place... I have a Xmas tree adapted to the size of the room (means, small), and I made Greeting Cards for the occasion (talking of that, thanks again to Davide for the painting stuff).
As Noel is written in our DNA now, I am pretty sure that Mogusa will soon publish her own Chrismas posts...

クリスマスは大切なものです。子供の時家事久都本当に楽しかったので、今でもクリスマスの特別な雰囲気が大好きです。それで東京にいても少しクリスマスの準備しました。


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Two weeks to wait before whishing you a Merry Chrismas !

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12 décembre 2009

A Japanese grand-mother called me "devil" on the street

I was quietly coming back from the automatic laudry with my freshly washed clothes when I met a Japanese woman pushing the wheel-chair of an old half-sleeping grandmother. The old woman suddenly woke up, pointed me and strongly shouted with hatred "Oni-san !",  which means "Devil !" in Japanese. The lady behind her glanced at me and became embarrased double when she saw that I was perfectly aware of the meaning of this word. With my blond hair, I embody the image that an old Japanese woman can have of the "red devils", the foreigners who arrived in Japan from the Netherlands in the old times : tall, red-face people with blond hair and dangerous fire guns.

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道で、日本人のおばあさんは私に「鬼さん」と言ました。ちょっとショックしました。世界のどこでも、外国人はいつも鬼ですな。

You even find the red devils in the most famous Japanese tale, Momotaro. Momotaro decides to help the people from a village which is regularly visited by a red devil who steals food and scares the inhabitants. Momotaro catches the red devil and asks him why does he do what he does. But the red devil starts crying, answering that he has no choice : he's from the far country of the Netherlands and would like to get back home but he doesn't have his boat anymore and the people here call him devil so he has to steal his food to survive. It should have learnt to the Japanese people to look twice before calling someone devil but it didn't seem to work for the grand-mother I met on the street. Well, of course after that Momotaro finds the true nasty red devils and beat them so they have to leave with their boats ; maybe she remembers only this part...

It is the first time I face direct racism from a Japanese and it's a strange sensation, despite the comic of the insult and the fact that it was coming from a sick old woman. Usually the Japanese tend to compare me to Marie-Antoinette, not a devil... From an extreme to another !

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8 décembre 2009

A Studious Sunday - where less skyscrapers means more blue sky

Last Sunday, I was a bit desperate considering that I was going to spend this perfectly sunny day inside an exam room, alone with Mister Japanese Language Aptitude Test, Level 2. No need to say that in addition to the fact that it's an exam, the Japanese Language Aptitude Test is a tricky, nasty, unlovable multiple choice test. Instead of evaluating your real abilitity to talk and write in Japanese, it tests your sense of time management and your capacity to avoid traps. For example, there is a kanji you know. You could even write it without any problem in a sentence. But in the JLPT, you are proposed 4 kanji with one or two different strokes only; and because your are a human being, the simple fact to read it make you loose your knowledge of the kanji. As a result, to be ready for the JLPT, you should know everything scientifically. Knowing a kanji would need : knowing every part of it and the ways they complete each other in the right order to make the right shape and to make the right meaning. And it is the case for every part of this exam. A nightmare for me who have never been able to memorize anything by heart but poetry. Even in French, I don't know one single grammatical rule ; just reading and letting my instinct think for me, I have always had a good orthographe. To make it simple, I would have prefered to write an essay and to have an interview with a human person in front of me to judge of my concrete skills. But anyway.

The good surprise of the day was the place. I had to commute until Hanakoganei station, on the Seibu Shinjuku Line ; 20 minutes from Takadanobaba with the Express train. The University of Kaetsu is a nice campus surrounded by trees, and above all, silent. Even if I leave in a very quiet area in Tokyo, the silence does not have the same quality there. It was amazingly peaceful. The premices themselves were great, modern and visually interesting. I could'nt prevent myself to shoot it during the break : welcome to the Kaetsu University...

練習の日曜日、日本語能力試験の二級を受けました。すごく大変でしたが、場所は素晴らしかったので、やっぱり大丈夫でした。次はキャンパスの写真です。明るくていいところですね。嘉悦大学へよこそう。

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7 décembre 2009

A glance to Paris...

For change it's not Japanese.

A little thought for Home... and for Love too.

A quoi ca sert l'amour



 

5 décembre 2009

And it was the messsage of the day...

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... "Leave me alone" on a Japanese chest. Authentic.

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29 novembre 2009

紅葉、Nature Art

In Japanese, "fall" is said "aki", written with the symbols of the tree and the fire. And it's true that, in Japan, the trees burn into colors at autumn. There is nothing better than re-discovering the places that you already know, colored with red, yellow and orange balls of fire : here, my old Shinjuku-gyoen and Four Seasons Hotel garden. With this November sweet sun, it was delicious, pure poetr, especially the momiji, the Japanese maple trees, which have leaves in the shape of delicate stars. Let me give you a sample of this urban Nature Art.

「秋」の漢字はとてもきれいだと思います。秋の時日本の木は本当に火の色です。よく知っている所は違う場所の感じがあります。例えば、新宿公園や隣のホテルの庭はすばらしくなりました。そしていい天気だし、かわいい星に見える紅葉の葉はすてきです。本当に自然の美術だと思います。


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Four Seasons
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28 novembre 2009

Micronesya, a Japanese Paradise

Japanese Autumn is sweet, definitely sweeter than Paris' one, but still I needed more sun before begining my internship - three months sat in an office when I will barely see the sun shining...
So, I flought to the sunny Guam (USA), a southern island of the Mariannas' archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean : around 3 hours by plane from Tokyo, the ideal place to rest for the Japanese, and a little change for me because local people here speak Japanese more than English, even to me ! An appendix of Japan, if I can say. It's very clean, very organized, very Japanese-friendly (ramen-ya at every corner). But with a little change that makes all the difference...

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First, Guam is EMPTY. The streets are surrounded by the same Ginza-style shops, the same international food restaurants than in Japan, but you have so much space everywhere - ceiling are highs, streets are wide, and you feel so much confortable in this micro-island than on the main-land of Honshu... because people don't live here like sardins in a can...

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The hotel pool, empty...


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The streets, empty...

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The beach, empty...

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The bar, empty...


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The aquarium, empty...


Then, Guam is bright. The sun, the water, even the grass is shiny as if there where pigments to reflect the light from everywhere, so you absolutely need to wear sunglasses, even the Japanese. How can nature make the things so different, from the dark volcano-ground Japanese beaches and the ultra-white seashores of Guam ?

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Sooooo transparent water

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Blue lagoon

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Bright beach

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Underwater

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Underground colors effects

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Surface coral art


Finally, it is USA after all, and the Japanese are not at home, even if everything is kind of made for them. I heard many of them doing an effort to speak in English with the local people on the shops for example, even if they really didn't need to do so. In addition, I was welcome everywhere with a "happy Thanksgiving" and I could see a huge pannel saying "We support our troops" at the top of the airport entrance, which is definitely not very in the Japanese spirit. But from the bus, it seems that I was the only one to notice the message... Polite blindness or fear to get involved in any political subject ?

I also felt that I was going to the USA at the check point of the international airport of Guam, where I had to answer to the most intimate questions about my "strange" interest for Japan, and about with who I was travalling and why this choice. But in the absence of US visa, I had no right in front of the final decision of the custom guy and if he decided not to let me enter, I could only take my flight back to Tokyo... So, I answered to everything smiling like a good girl and I let the person in front of me to play with my fate around 7 minutes before allowing me to receive the precious stamp on my passport... Jeezus.

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Japan, USA, Guam...

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Two girls from Kansai who absolutely wanted to take a picture with me... I am so exotic

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Guam : a Chrismas tree and tropical plants


Guam is also a little Marketing Paradise where everything is based on the themes of flowers, fruits and exotism - hawaiian style clothes, hair flowers, perfumed skin-care, coconut soaps, fruity cocktails, scented candles - and as all is moderatly cheap, you can't prevent yourself to fall for all these colors, all these smells ; and you shop... and shop... Guam is a brand itself, in addition with the commodity of the malls which propose the same global stuff you can find all over the world, from Prada to Vuitton, Givenchy and Chanel.

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Cocktails...

 

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... Cocktails...

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... and Cocktails.

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Aquarium-bar

But if you take a bus for a few miles (yes, we are in the USA, remember), then you discover an untouched nature, very impressive : the deep blue of the sea, the strength of the wind, the schock between the high cliff and the sweet beach... You can still imagine the lifestyle of the Chamorros before the Spanish came on the island, despite the routine of tourism and the confort established for the high-demanding Japanese travellers...

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I had a very good time at Guam, and I encourage all the Tokyo-addicts to take a break once in this Japanese Paradise...

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21 novembre 2009

Bye Bye Waseda...

The Waseda module is over. In one week, we will start our internship at a Japanese company.
It would be a cliche to say that it was too fast... I prefer to say that we learnt a lot in a very short time. I remember myself in March, at the beginning of ETP, unable to introduce myself in keigo and hesiating on the reading of 勉強  No doubt that we improved our Japanese. And despite the homeworks, the awful kanji test every morning, the tricky gramma traps, the pressure to finish our essays/speechs and the constant feeling to forget about 75% of what we learnt every week, we never stopped to have fun studying Japanese.


早稲田大学の期間は、終わりです。再来週から、研修が始まります。
もちろん早すぎたけど、この短い期間で色々勉強し、本当に進歩しました。三月の私は敬語が全然できなくて、「勉強」のかんじが読めませんでした!実は時々とても大変でしたが、宿題でも、毎日の試験でも、文法の難しいテストでも、よくがんばってよく忘れるの感じでも、色々勉強し、いつも楽しかったです。

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Next step, new challenge : the internship !

21 novembre 2009

November Fantasy

Tokyo finally became a cold and windy place to live. But strangely, this month has been especially colourful, and magic is in the air. Let me present a sample of this November Fantasy.
現在、東京はとても寒くなったけど、面白くて明るいものが見られました。次の写真はこのすてきな十一月を見せています。

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A meeting of Cellos - very fashionable Cellos

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Delicious macarons - from my Latvian angels

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A Chrismas Bicycle met with A*eyes

November is NOT grey.

14 novembre 2009

A Quarter of Century - 25 years old Birthday Party in Tokyo

Thank you to all the guests, Europeans and Japanese, who joined Valentina and me to celebrate our birthdays ! I had a lot of fun and unexpected emotions - especially when you guys took my chair on your shoulders, with me on it... Trust me, I will never forget the feeling to be suddenly sat in the airs; I am scared just by thinking of it again... kyaaaaah !


I received so many nice presents, that I cant resist to share it on this page. Judge by yourself.

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A cat

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A voucher to go to the Spa

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Nice autumn flowers

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A cute photoalbum-calendar and a bath rose from Fran-fran (Minase-san, how did you know that it is one of my favorite shops in Japan ?!! You rock.)

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Delicious chocolates (with an amazing calligraphy card... Thank you Hajime-san !)

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A charming tea-box

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Cookies in the cutest package

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A mug with the Waseda-Bear

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A big bottle of Freixenet (very, very, VERY good choice)

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Breakfast at Tiffany's

And now, the party.
Nice dinner at Cafe Cotton Club, then short break at The Hub before going to the karaoke. A few pictures for the ones who couldn't come...

 

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by Hitomi

 

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by Natalja

 

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by Natalja

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by Francesco

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More pictures to come from the guests...
and the complete collection on the photo album ETP Japan !

Thank you again to everyone, you made me happy as a princess !

Xoxo...

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